Shooting Star
by PhoenixDowner
Summary: Sora and Riku chase after a shooting star on the beach one night and find something else instead. Mainly focused on friendship with some slight SoKai at the end.


Shooting Star

For Day 5 of SoKai Week. I'm hoping to post Day 4's prompt tomorrow instead because I need a little more time to finish it.

Enjoy!

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"Riku, look! A shooting star!"

Sora scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as his legs could carry him across the bridge and through the Seaside Shack. If he could catch that star, his wish would come true. Or at least that was what the stories said.

He burst through the door and almost lost his balance on the sand. Running barefoot on it was a lot harder than running on the path, but he didn't care. He was gonna catch that star, no matter what.

"Sora, wait up!" Riku called, racing after him.

"Hurry!" Sora shouted back. "Almost – there!"

He ran across the water's edge with Riku right behind him. The star shone bright up above them now. It shone so bright Sora had to cover his eyes.

"It's following us!" he said. And in the next couple of seconds, something really weird happened. There was a bright flash and a loud boom. Sora went flying backwards, right into Riku, and they crashed to the ground with a painful thump.

"Ow…" Riku grumbled.

"Sorry!" Sora sat up and rubbed his head, freeing Riku to sit up, too. It took ages till he could see again, but when he did, his mouth dropped open.

"A girl?"

But that didn't make any sense. Riku and Tidus and Wakka had all said shooting stars were magic rocks. No one had told him that they really had girls inside of them.

But it was a girl lying on the sand near them. Her hair was red, redder than Selphie's even. It was as red as the crabs he and Riku liked to catch in the pool by the Secret Place. He didn't know people could even have hair that color.

Staring at her in wonder, he crawled to her side on his hands and knees. Her eyes were closed, and her face was half buried in the sand. A soft light glowed off the necklace around her neck, but she wasn't moving.

Frowning, he bent over and waved his hand in her face. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Grandma…" she murmured, and her voice was sad and scared.

"Grandma?" Sora repeated.

"Do you want your grandma?" Riku asked. "We can go look for her for you. What's her name?"

The girl's eyes fluttered open. They were kinda blue and kinda purple, like that one color on the rainbow. Indigo? Yeah, that's what it was called.

No one around here had eyes like that. Maybe she really was a star.

"Are you okay?" Sora asked again. She just looked at him, and her eyes were big and scared. Sora didn't know why. The beach wasn't very scary, and he and Riku were just kids. She shouldn't be scared, really.

"Hey, it's okay," Sora said, holding out his hand.

"You're safe," Riku added. "No one's gonna hurt you."

Sora smiled and nodded. His mom always told him it made people happy when he smiled, so maybe it would make the girl happy, too.

She stared at him, and that scared look in her eyes went away. Her hand was shaking, but she took his, and her necklace glowed again. She looked from it to him, and he smiled even bigger.

"See?" he said. "You're safe."

She smiled back, and maybe she really was a star, because her smile made him feel all warm inside. But her hand was cold like she'd stuck it in a bucket of ice water. He frowned and rubbed it between his to warm her up.

"Riku, she's really cold."

"Hang on, I'll go get my dad," Riku said. "Stay here."

Her eyes followed Riku as he went to the dock and untied his boat.

"It's okay, he'll be back," Sora promised.

She looked up at him again, and she was shivering all over, even though Sora was trying to warm her up.

That wasn't good. Sora frowned again. He didn't know what to do. Whenever he was cold, his parents gave him a blanket, but there weren't any blankets here.

Wait. In the shack there were lots of extra blankets and sleeping bags and tents and camping stuff.

He stood. "Wait here, I'm gonna—"

"Don't go!" The girl sat up and grabbed his shirt. Sora knew he'd done something wrong because her eyes were sad again.

He didn't like it when she was sad, so he sat back down and held her hand again.

"Okay, I'll stay here till Riku's dad comes."

"Ri-ku," the girl said, rubbing sand off her cheek.

"That's right, Riku. He's my best friend." Sora smiled. "And I'm Sora."

"Sora." She curled her fingers more tightly around his hand, and her necklace glowed again.

"Yeah. What's your name?"

She touched her necklace. "Kairi."

"Kairi," Sora said, trying the sounds out. "Like the sea." It was a pretty name, but it didn't sound very star-like. "Where's your home?"

"Home?"

"Yeah. Where are you from? You fell out of the sky, so that means you're from somewhere else, right?"

He'd never seen anyone fall out of the sky before, and he wanted to know where she was from. But her face scrunched up and her eyes watered, and Sora knew he'd said the wrong thing again.

"Hey, it's okay, don't cry!" But that just made her cry harder.

He scratched his cheek, not really sure what to do. Then he thought of that time when he'd tripped on the road in front of his house. The scrapes on his knees had been scary. They'd hurt so much he couldn't stand up, and he'd cried till his mom had come out of the house and picked him up and carried him inside to the bathtub.

She'd said all sorts of nice things as she washed his knees and dried them. He'd gotten to wear blue and red Band-Aids after that, and she'd even let him eat ice cream every day till his knees were all better.

He didn't know why Kairi was sad, but maybe holding her and saying the nice things his mom said to him would help her, too.

He put his arms around her. "It's okay. I'm here now. I'll make it better."

It worked. Kairi stopped crying. He held her like that till Riku came back with his dad and a bunch of other grownups. By then she was asleep and didn't hear him say goodbye, but that was okay. He could talk to her tomorrow.

As his mom and dad tucked him into bed that night, he asked if all stars had girls inside of them.

"Girls? Oh no. Stars don't have girls inside of them," his dad said. His voice was serious but he was grinning.

"Really?" Sora asked. "I thought they were just magic rocks, but then Kairi came out of that shooting star Riku and I saw."

His mom kissed his forehead and tucked the blankets around him. "Maybe she did."

"Do you know what stars really are though, Sora?" his dad asked.

"No, what?"

"They're other worlds," his mom said, a faraway look in her eyes, her voice the same as when she read him his favorite stories.

"Other worlds?" A picture of a big white and gold castle floating in the sky flickered through his head, but then it was gone.

She nodded. "At least that's what the stories say. Remember the one I told you about your name?"

Oh, that was one of his favorites. He always loved it when his mom told him that story.

"Yeah," he said. "You said all the worlds share the same sky. You named me after that story, right?"

His mom smiled. "That's right."

Something was still kinda bugging him, so he decided to ask about it. "If Kairi came from a falling star… then does that mean… her world fell, too?"

His mom and dad looked at each other, and it was a long time before his dad said something.

"We don't know what happened to Kairi. But we do know she needs friends. Will you be her friend, Sora?"

"Sure."

He didn't tell them, because if you told anyone your wish, it wouldn't come true. But what he'd wished for when he saw the shooting star that night was a friend. He and Riku were best friends, but he wanted another friend he could play with when Riku was sick or busy and when Tidus and Wakka and Selphie were playing their own games.

And Kairi did become his friend. As the weeks went by, she played with him and Riku more and more. The sad look left her eyes, and the day she smiled again, Sora smiled, too.

Before long he had trouble remembering what life was like without her. He didn't want to, either, because now he knew magic was real. It was real and it had red hair and indigo eyes and a big smile.

As the years passed and they grew older and he realized how much he didn't know about the worlds, about reality, about Kingdom Hearts, he held onto one truth:

Kairi's heart might have sought the light in his the day Radiant Garden had fallen, but it was in his own darkest moments, his lowest of lows, that she shone most brilliantly.

She was the shooting star that lit up the night sky, after all.


End file.
